If I am not in (God's grace) may he put me there, and if I am may he so keep me.
~St. Joan of Arc

Sunday, March 05, 2006

A Gay Time at the Oscars

Tonight is one of my favorite nights. Growing up in theatre I always aspired to be at the Oscars

... not as a Best Actress or even Best Supporting Actress nominee, not as a presenter (actually I would HATE that one!) But as a ....

seat filler.

Can you imagine? Get all gussied up and get paid to sit in someone famous's seat, likely next to someone else famous! Now that's a job. And you aren't stuck by the same famous person all night, oh no! You get to switch when your famous person comes back to claim their seat to some other famous person who needed to use the loo...I mean from claiming their Oscar. Then you might even crash an Oscar party or two.

Oh... Ok...so I also had my Best Actress fantasies... and my speech all thought up. (Hence my lovely Avatar self on the red carpet down and to your right.) But I outgrew the desire to be famous. Well actually "outgrew" may be a little misleading. Thanks to a book called Toxic Fame, I developed a healthy fear of stalkers combined with an aversion to total loss of anonymity (not to mention my already well established phobias of both flying and earthquakes) which allowed me to give up on moving to Hollywood to join the circus. Therefore celebrating Oscar in the company of the privilaged few is a dream forever unfulfilled. Well...I could still be a seat filler. I doubt THEY have stalkers, I could take a bus, and what are the chances the Earth would quake on Oscar night...

unless it involved metaphoric quaking due to my finally hookin' up with George Clooney. But I digress. (Side note to husband: Sorry honey. You know it's just a harmless fantasy, right?)

A few years ago I found another coveted Oscar invite right here in my own home town, in my own crowd of theatre friends. I was invited to and attended my first....Gay Oscar party. Ok it wasn't totally gay, because I was there. But I was about it representing the strait community. And I gotta tell ya... You have not experienced the Oscars til you are at a gay man's affair. The food..the wine..the company...the decor. The PRE SHOW!

Forget E or Entertainment tonight's preshow. Forget the Rivers clan, B-listed Kathy Griffin and Cojo. Even forget Issac molesting actresses on the way in. They have nothing on... sitting among your own room full of gay men commenting on the fashions and "man" candy on their way in. The first year I attended was the year Bjork was nominated. She showed up on the red carpet wearing that dead swan wrapped around her.

And one of the men shouted, "Hey Look! It's 'Berserk!'"

I found out that year something that you would think I would have known already being a theatre "hag" from the time I was 5 (well the theatre part that is, the hag part came in High School.) I learned that the Oscars are the Gay man's Superbowl. There is a contest for favorite hors d'oeuvres brought by the guests, favorite alcoholic beverage, favorite desert. There is a betting sheet and a five dollar ante (I did not bet because I knew these guys would rake me over the coals.) And the red carpet show?

"Did you SEE Halle Berry's dress???? Oh my GOOOOOODDDD! She is absolutely GEORGOUS in that BURGUNDY netting with a SHOWERING BOUQUET of flowers and TAFETA TRAIN !!!" Now... you know...no strait man is going to use those terms in a sentence. EVER.

And this year? No party :( I just got an email from my friend and he said it was just he and his partner for a quiet night of Oscar viewing. What a sad day for Oscar. I would love to have been part of the celebration when Brokeback Mountain wins!!!

I did however find out his secret to the sucessful parties of years gone by. Those gay men have their own Oscar 'how to' site!) I'm gonna take notes from there for my Oscar party next year!!!!

14 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Being the host of said party I must say that the year Jen came was, how shall I say it, gayer than a two-dollar bill! Regardless of how gay the crowd was, a good time was had by all (especially the winner of the $85 Oscar Pool). The party shall return - just needed a breather from all the chiffon, silk and stilletto heels ;) Greg

Thanks Greg!!! Let's host one together next year! We have plenty of room, and our re-decorating should be done by then. We can invite Rick's Army friends and our theatre friends! It will be like a cultural UN meeting. (Or like our wedding was at the UU church!) Wonder how those ROTC guys felt about the rainbows in the entry!

Ummm... I wouldn't say I've CONQUERED my fear. The last time I flew (my first all alone) was really hard. It's tough to take enough drugs to numb the phobia AND be alert enough to get yourself around an airport all alone!